New Super Mario Bros. Wii Review

Dan Richardson

New Super Mario Bros Wii feels like a shameless cash-in on a beloved franchise. Compared to the well received DS iteration the entire game feels recycled and lazy, made purely to take advantage of a loyal fan-base and consumers who don’t know better.

New New Super Mario Marios (as I like to refer to it as) features none of the production values seen in the other Mario Wii effort, Super Mario Galaxy. Galaxy features not only the best visuals on the platform but also a brilliant orchestral soundtrack and hidden content to find. NNSMM copies and pastes higher-resolution generic art assets from the DS release and uses shitty MIDI sound files which would sound right at home on the portable system, leaving the title feeling completely soulless and without character. The feeling of sheer laziness is further exemplified by the fact that the game’s multiplayer (arguably the main draw of the title) forces the third and fourth players to play as anonymous Toad characters. Why couldn’t Nintendo have created a character select screen, allowing players to choose between the plethora of Mario’s beloved established characters instead of forcing consumers to use a placeholder that no-one gives a flying fuck about? Miyamoto himself alluded that coding in characters different sizes and shapes to the plumbing duo (such as Peach) would have taken extra programming work.  Cry me a bloody river.

Nintendo’s brown-nosed fanboys would instantly let you know that none of this matters as long as the gameplay is good. Luckily for them, it is. The series’ platforming is as good as ever, taking the player through varied environments which have unique gameplay altering assets. It’s all been done before, but at least it is fun. Lives are made plentiful, ensuring that the occasional unfair death is bearable and fuels that feeling of “just one more try”. All of this said, if you really don’t care about visuals or audio quality and just want a solid solo Mario experience, just download Super Mario Bros 3 for a tenth of the price from the Wii’s Virtual Console.

As I previously said, the game’s main draw to most players will be the prospect of four-way multiplayer in a traditional Mario game. Unfortunately due to the heinous price of Wii Remotes I could only test out two-player, which I had modest fun with. My lack of local controllers made it even more irritating that online multiplayer is not supported at all as I would have liked to have tried out the full experience. That said, the typical Wii owner is not likely to have a full set of four Wii remotes (most people likely have two at most) so I experienced what the average Wii gamer would.

In the end Nintendo’s latest outing doesn’t hold up to other recent platforming efforts. It boasts lazy presentation, audio and offline-only multiplayer. It doesn’t have the soul or innovation of titles such as Little Big Planet and leaves Mario, a once industry leader, in the dust. While you'll find fun in this, if you must play a Mario game buy Super Mario Bros 3 or the DS version. They're much better.